


SLASHLESS: A JohnLock Fic That... Isn't

by Cumberbumberwumbers



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Abusive Cabbie, Angst, Angst and Humor, Asexual Sherlock, BAMF John, But it's too late now so... Enjoy!, But then again they never do it so I guess that counts, Canon Compliant, Domestic Fluff, Except for the part where they talk a really lot about sex, Except not for them, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Humor, I mean I guess someone is having Sexytimes somewhere..., Johnlock - Freeform, Just not at 221b, M/M, Mrs. Hudson - Freeform, Not Beta Read, Parody, Resolved Sexual Tension, Romance, Sexy Times, Shipping, Someone really should have spoken to me in a kind but firm tone about what a bad idea this was, Sorry Not Sorry, Tea, This ship has sailed, Toast, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Which was probably a mistake, a complete lack of shipping, actually, except not really, letswritesherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-18
Updated: 2013-06-18
Packaged: 2017-12-15 09:39:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/848035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cumberbumberwumbers/pseuds/Cumberbumberwumbers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My entry for "Let's Write Sherlock"!</p><p>Sherlock Holmes and John Watson sound out their infinitely complex personal relationship and come to a not-so-very-surprising conclusion. </p><p>(Psst: it's a parody!)</p><p>Update: It has come to my attention that a lot of people read ONLY "Explicit" fics. (You filthy pervs!) So I thought I'd up the rating, but honestly there's nothing in here that could be called explicit because I am too bashful. So here: Fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck! There you go. Enjoy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	SLASHLESS: A JohnLock Fic That... Isn't

**After a nearly disastrous case, Sherlock and John share a tense taxi ride back to Baker Street. With emotions running high, they finally arrive back at 221B, and then…**

Sherlock sweeps dramatically out of the cab and does not pay the fare. As usual.

Standing on the pavement, John pats his pockets: notebook, mobile, Sig Sauer P226R…

“Sherlock, I don’t have…” He looks up just in time to see Sherlock disappear into 221b, the door slamming behind him. “Oh, bloody hell… Just. Wait a minute. Ok, I know, just…” As the cabbie curses him in three different languages, John ducks into the front hall and wakes Mrs. Hudson for the fare.

The snarling cabbie disposed of, John marches up the stairs and throws open the flat door, ready for battle. Sherlock is crouching on his chair like a perversely beautiful gargoyle.

“Sherlock, let me ask you — do you not _know_ that cabs cost money, or do you just not _care_ that cabs cost money.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Boring.”

“Boring? Is it? I’ll tell you, Sherlock, it’s not particularly ‘boring’ to have to wake Mrs. Hudson while a deranged cabbie curses me with intestinal worms!”

Sherlock raises one questioning eyebrow.

“Pashto. Afghanistan. He also threatened to do obscene things to my mother’s well.”

“Inventive.”

John points a finger at Sherlock and pulls rank. “You will apologize to Mrs. Hudson tomorrow.”

Sherlock waves a hand dismissively; the meaning is unclear, but John knows it’s the best he’s going to get. He turns away, walks to the kitchen.

“Tea?”

“Please.”

John’s temper cools with the comforting ritual of making tea. He pours milk in his own, nothing in Sherlock’s. Why bother? He isn’t going to drink it anyway. He carries the mugs out to the sitting room where Sherlock has thrown himself into a deep lounge in his chair, steepled hands against his lips. John hands Sherlock his tea, then traces with his eyes Sherlock’s lanky frame, his long elegant legs sprawling from his own chair to John’s.

“Oi!” John kicks Sherlock’s feet out of his way and sits.

Sherlock peers over his mug at their bare feet, side by side. His own are long, thin, articulate; John’s are wide and sturdy, the feet of a man who has marched too many miles in combat boots. They are so different, these feet; he notices that they are not engaged in an achingly shy game of footsie.

John reaches under the chair for his current crime novel, but sees Sherlock looking at him and stops halfway, wary. “What?”

“John, we need to talk.”

John thumps the arm of the chair. “I knew it. I _bloody_ knew it! What have you done now?”

Sherlock makes a calming gesture, “No, it’s fine.”

“I’ll be the judg… you just let me… OK. Just say it. Whatever it is.” John puts his tea on the side table, leans his elbows on his knees, and drops his head into his hands.

“John. We’ve been living together for some time and I feel I must tell you…”

John slowly shakes his cradled head from side to side.

“…that I am not in love with you.”

“God. Sherlock. I am so… what?” John lifts his head from his hands and stares at Sherlock.

“I’m not in love with you.”

“You’re not.”

Sherlock smiles his patented ¼ smile. “No, I’m not. Never have been, not from the first moment we met.”

“Oh.”

“I haven’t been longing to tell you all this time, John.” He holds his tea close to his face so he can, what, smell it? John is never sure.

John retrieves his tea, sips and considers. This is Sherlock, his friend, his colleague, telling him… what? That he is _just_ John's friend and colleague? That’s… that’s…

Actually, that’s completely fine.

“Sherlock.”

“Mmm?”

“I’m not in love with you either.”

Sherlock regards him dubiously over the edge of his mug. “Really? Are you certain?”

John rolls his eyes. “Oh, charming. Now I’m even _more_ certain.”

“Well, John, of the two of us, I am clearly the more attractive. Brainy is the new sexy, after all. If one of us were to fall in love with the other, I would think it would be…”

“NO. Yes, you’re amazing, and amazing _looking_ , you bastard. If you cared about pulling women I’d never get laid again, hanging about with you. But you’re just not my cup of tea, romantically speaking.”

“So you’ve never fantasized…”

John searches the secret places in his heart, places even he dares not go. “Yeeeaaah… no.” He considers Sherlock for a moment. “I’m trying to work up something more than knowing you fit a phenotype generally considered attractive, but…”

“Nothing?”

“Not a blip.”

“Fascinating.”

“Is it?”

“Not really.”

* * *

The next morning, Sherlock sits at the table wrapped in a sheet. He watches John putter about, getting ready for a shift at the clinic. John brings two mugs of tea and a plate of toast to the table. He offers the plate to Sherlock, who waves it away with disdain. “Not hungry.”

John shrugs, puts the plate on the table, and places one mug in front of Sherlock before sitting down with his own. The two men sit across from each other for a moment, failing utterly to stare into each other’s eyes or betray conflicting emotions with their trembling hands and thuddering pulse points and whatnot. John sips his tea with absolutely no subtext.

“Will you be writing up last night’s case?” Sherlock asks.

“Oh, definitely. That was a close one,” John replies.

“I think it would be wise to come to an understanding with Lestrade that Anderson is to have no further contact with fireworks,” Sherlock muses.

“Or lederhosen.”

“Oh, well. That goes without saying.”

John continues sipping his tea, Sherlock continues not sipping his tea.

“Hey, Sherlock?”

“Yes, John.”

“Last night, when we were hiding in that cupboard, I noticed that you weren’t standing just a little too close. Come to think of it, I’ve never caught you breathing in the scent of me or gazing at me in unguarded moments with a depth of emotion I never before suspected. Is there some deep-seated trauma in your dark, terrifying past that would cause you to reject my advances even as you want so desperately to accept?”

“Are you planning to make advances, John?”

“No, just curious.”

Sherlock considers the question. “No, no trauma. No dubiously consensual sex, no torment from school bullies, no early parental death internalized as my fault…”

“OK, I…”

“…no innocent murder of childhood pets, no kidnapping, no beatings at the hands of ignorant homophobes, no selling my body for short-lived drug highs…”

“Wait, what?”

“None of that — just nothing at all.”

John stares at him for a good long time before deciding that was more of an answer than he actually wanted. “Right, then.” He finishes his tea and takes their dishes to the sink.

Sherlock rises from his chair and sweeps to the window, where he stands idly twanging at the strings of his violin as it rests on his music stand. “John?” he calls.

“Yeah?” John shouts back over the sound of running water.

“John, are you desperately hoping — deep down — that someday I will crowd you into a corner and kiss you so long and deep and hard that all our fear and doubt will just wash away until nothing is left but our mouths, hungry for each other, our hands desperately pulling at each other’s clothing, buttons scattering to the four corners of the flat --defying, for that one instant, the relative tensile strengths of cotton shirting and heavyweight button thread -- until finally, finally, we press skin to skin and fall into an oblivion of passion?” Sherlock turns to look inquiringly at John.

Without struggling to control his hidden desires or breathing deeply to slow his heartbeat (which is, at the moment, not racing at all) John calls back, “Nope.” He rinses his mug and puts it in the dishrack.

“No?”

John walks to the doorway, wiping his hands on a tea towel. “No. I have never pictured that scenario.”

“And now that you have?”

“Mmm… no. I mean, it sounds great in the abstract. But with you? Doesn’t do a thing for me.”

“John. You wound me.” Sherlock turns back to the window, entirely unwounded.

* * *

That evening, Sherlock lies on the sofa in his dramatic thinking pose as John sits in his chair reading. John's focus is unaffected by Sherlock’s presence, which does not pull at him like some miraculous lodestone. He can tolerate not knowing — pretty much indefinitely, he thinks — but what the hell. He asks, “Sherlock, are you fighting the desire to sneak into my room at night, to come to me so quietly and gently that I would only half awaken, and in that dreaming state make love to me with such tenderness and devotion that I would be yours, only yours, forevermore your John?”

“My God. That sounds amazing.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“Not to mention convenient.”

“Don’t have to tell _me_. So?”

“Not a spark of interest. Don’t get me wrong: if I were suppressing such urges, I would definitely come to you so quietly and gently that you would only half awaken, and in that dreaming state make love to you… what was it?”

“…with such tenderness and devotion that I would be yours, only yours, forevermore your John.”

“Yes. If ever I desire that, I promise you, John, you will be the first to know.”

John nods. “Got it. So.”

“So?”

“What do we do now?”

“I suppose we do what we always do. I’ll play violin, imbuing every note with the endless sorrow of not having you, then pace the floor all night battling the personal demons that will not let me love.”

“And I’ll watch crap telly, just barely repressing the urge to take you in my arms and kiss you, passionately, right there in the window where everyone can see our beautiful love. Then I’ll make the long walk upstairs to my empty bed, have a sad, lonely wank, and cry myself to sleep.”

“That’s settled then. I’m glad we had this little chat.”

The End…?

(Actually, _yes_ : The End)

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> by Cumberbumberwumbers (aka CumberCollect, www.cumbercollective.com)
> 
> Graciously Brit-picked by @LoofyJ/samwisepotaygee; all errors my own.
> 
> IMPORTANT: I do not mean this as an insult to anyone who writes JohnLock fan fiction (or anyone else, for that matter). This is really just my bored brain spilling over.


End file.
